The Aesthetics of Silence
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The scene changes to an empty room. Rimbaud has gone to Abyssinia to make his fortune in the slave trade. Wittgenstein, after a period as a village school-teacher, has chosen menial work as a hospital orderly. Duchamp has turned to chess. Accompanying these exemplary renunciations of a vocation, each man has declared that he regards his previous achievements in poetry, philosophy, or art as trifling, of no importance."--The Aesthetics of Silence by Susan Sontag |
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The Aesthetics of Silence is an essay by Susan Sontag first published in book form in Styles of Radical Will. She examines three 20th century intellectuals who - after having produced work in their younger years - stopped making anything as they grew older. Her case rests on Arthur Rimbaud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Marcel Duchamp.